Philip Pullman » Newshttp://www.philip-pullman.com
Author of the award winning 'His Dark Materials' trilogyMon, 22 Dec 2014 11:44:40 +0000en-GBhourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.0Discussion forums & Twitterhttp://www.philip-pullman.com/discussion-forums-twitter/
http://www.philip-pullman.com/discussion-forums-twitter/#commentsTue, 03 Dec 2013 09:02:37 +0000http://www.philip-pullman.com/?p=1919I'm grateful to all those who have taken part in discussions about the various topics that have...

]]>I’m grateful to all those who have taken part in discussions about the various topics that have arisen here. Unfortunately this site, like many others, has been targeted by advertisers of fake Rolex watches and so on, not to mention other less agreeable things, and cluttered the place up so much it’s almost impossible to fight your way through. We are in the process of clearing that all up, but in the meantime we’ll suspend the discussion forums until we can be sure that anything we don’t want is kept off. Meanwhile …

]]>http://www.philip-pullman.com/discussion-forums-twitter/feed/0Enid Jones, 1920-2013http://www.philip-pullman.com/enid-jones-1920-2013/
http://www.philip-pullman.com/enid-jones-1920-2013/#commentsTue, 12 Feb 2013 09:31:45 +0000http://www.philip-pullman.com/?p=1921Enid Jones was a remarkable lady, and quite the best teacher I ever knew. I was lucky enough to be one of her pupils at secondary school; she encouraged my interest in her subject, English, and praised my work without ever, as she said, giving it more than 8 out of 10.

]]>Enid Jones was a remarkable lady, and quite the best teacher I ever knew. I was lucky enough to be one of her pupils at secondary school; she encouraged my interest in her subject, English, and praised my work without ever, as she said, giving it more than 8 out of 10. I sent her all my books (which I expect she would have marked in the same way) and I was privileged to know her as a dear friend. She died recently at the age of 92, physically frail, but mentally as sharp and alert as she had ever been. My work in future will have to go unmarked, but I shall never forget the example she set me of care and accuracy in the composition of English sentences, and even more of the love of poetry, which she communicated so well. Thank you, Enid.

]]>http://www.philip-pullman.com/enid-jones-1920-2013/feed/0“I Was a Rat!” at The Old Rep Theatre, Birmingham from the 12th Februaryhttp://www.philip-pullman.com/rat-old-rep-theatre-birmingham-12th-february/
http://www.philip-pullman.com/rat-old-rep-theatre-birmingham-12th-february/#commentsFri, 08 Feb 2013 09:33:22 +0000http://www.philip-pullman.com/?p=1923My story “I Was a Rat!”, adapted by Teresa Ludovico, will open at The Old Rep Theatre, Birmingham on 12 […]

]]>My story “I Was a Rat!”, adapted by Teresa Ludovico, will open at The Old Rep Theatre, Birmingham on 12 February, and then tour to Ipswich, Liverpool, Nottingham, Bury St Edmunds, Truro, Cambridge, Salford, Exeter, Leeds, and Hereford. There are more details about it on www.iwasarat.com

]]>http://www.philip-pullman.com/rat-old-rep-theatre-birmingham-12th-february/feed/0Philip Pullman novel to become children’s operahttp://www.philip-pullman.com/philip-pullman-novel-become-childrens-opera/
http://www.philip-pullman.com/philip-pullman-novel-become-childrens-opera/#commentsTue, 11 Dec 2012 09:34:56 +0000http://www.philip-pullman.com/?p=1926Philip Pullman’s novel The Firework-Maker’s Daughter is to be turned into an opera for children. Five singers and two puppeteers […]

]]>Philip Pullman’s novel The Firework-Maker’s Daughter is to be turned into an opera for children. Five singers and two puppeteers will tell the tale of Lila, a girl who wants to make fireworks like her father. Pullman, a former teacher, originally wrote …

]]>http://www.philip-pullman.com/philip-pullman-novel-become-childrens-opera/feed/0Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimmhttp://www.philip-pullman.com/fairy-tales-brothers-grimm/
http://www.philip-pullman.com/fairy-tales-brothers-grimm/#commentsSat, 08 Dec 2012 11:48:21 +0000http://www.philip-pullman.com/?p=1989As Philip Pullman points out in his succinct introduction to his new selection from their “Fairy Tales,” the Grimms’ decision […]

]]>As Philip Pullman points out in his succinct introduction to his new selection from their “Fairy Tales,” the Grimms’ decision “to collect and publish fairy tales was not an isolated phenomenon, but part of a widespread preoccupation of the time.” But …

]]>http://www.philip-pullman.com/official-trailer-brothers-grimm/feed/0Grimm Tales for Young and Old by Philip Pullman – reviewhttp://www.philip-pullman.com/grimm-tales-young-old-philip-pullman-review/
http://www.philip-pullman.com/grimm-tales-young-old-philip-pullman-review/#commentsMon, 08 Oct 2012 10:59:35 +0000http://www.philip-pullman.com/?p=1993The Guardian This year is the bicentennial of the first publication of a work that WH Auden described as one […]

This year is the bicentennial of the first publication of a work that WH Auden described as one of “the few indispensable, common-property books upon which western culture can be founded” and “next to the Bible in importance”. It also gave us the fictional character with the highest name recognition in the English language, Cinderella (although in 1812, when the book was published in German, the name she had was Ashputtel). The book is Kinder- und Hausmärchen (more commonly known as Grimms’ Fairy Tales) by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

So it is unsurprising and, indeed, proper that Penguin Classics should produce a new collection of the tales for this Christmas. And frankly, once you have arrived at this point, Philip Pullman is a shoo-in for the task, because he writes the most limpid, economic narrative prose; because he is already famous for dealing in magical realms (though a very different sort of magic); and, above all perhaps, because he is one of the very few contemporary writers who has written genuine cross-generational fiction. The Grimm Brothers did not set out to record children’s stories, and all the anthropological evidence suggests that until well into the 19th century these kinds of oral folk tales were not specifically for children but for everyone. This is nicely reflected in Pullman’s subtitle – “for young and old”.

]]>http://www.philip-pullman.com/grimm-tales-young-old-philip-pullman-review/feed/0Interview: Philip Pullman on Grimm Taleshttp://www.philip-pullman.com/interview-philip-pullman-on-grimm-tales/
http://www.philip-pullman.com/interview-philip-pullman-on-grimm-tales/#commentsWed, 03 Oct 2012 11:00:25 +0000http://www.philip-pullman.com/?p=1995The Telegraph As we sit by the stone fireplace in his home, a comfortable former farmhouse in an Oxfordshire village, […]

As we sit by the stone fireplace in his home, a comfortable former farmhouse in an Oxfordshire village, Philip Pullman talks about his retellings of Grimms’ fairy tales. There is driving rain outside, though it’s not wintry enough for there to be an actual fire. These hearthside stories have a long history in Pullman’s life. He enjoyed them as a child, but built on his knowledge when he trained teachers in storytelling at Westminster College. When he was approached by Penguin to use his expertise and give the tales his own voice, he “leapt at the chance”.

Pullman whittled down the 200 original tales recorded by the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm to 50, in a volume that is still 400 pages long. “I’m sure I have the best 50,” he says. The complete collection would have been repetitive, while some tales lacked quality or completeness. “Some excluded themselves: there were a couple of nasty anti-Semitic ones, for instance.”

Pullman worked with the 1857 collection in German in front of him, though he calls the finished book a “version” rather than a translation: “my German is not that rich, or that good”. He was helped by several translations, the earliest of them Victorian, and précised and made notes on all the tales before he made his choices. Inevitably these include famous favourites: Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, Briar Rose (the precursor of Sleeping Beauty), Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin… But there are also tales that have been hidden by time, like Briar Rose’s castle. Pullman has chopped down the undergrowth from, say, the ghoulish The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers, the delightfully silly Lazy Heinz, and his favourite, a story both violent and lyrical, The Juniper Tree.

Fed
Up so long and variously by
Our age’s fancy narrative concoctions,
I yearned for the kind of unseasoned telling found
In legends, fairy tales, a tone licked clean
Over the centuries by mild old tongues,
Grandam to cub, serene, anonymous.

… So my narrative
Wanted to be limpid, unfragmented;
My characters, conventional stock figures
Afflicted to a minimal degree
With personality and past experience –
A witch, a hermit, innocent young lovers,
The kinds of being we recall from Grimm,
Jung, Verdi, and the commedia dell’arte.

So writes the American poet James Merrill at the opening of “The Book of Ephraim”, the first part of his extraordinary long poem The Changing Light at Sandover (1982). Discussing the way in which he hopes to tell a story of his own, he singles out two of the most important characteristics of the fairy tale, as he sees it: the “serene, anonymous” voice in which it’s told, and the “conventional, stock figures” who inhabit it.

When Merrill mentions “Grimm”, he needs to say no more: we all know what he means. For most western readers and writers in the past two hundred years, the Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales) of the Brothers Grimm has been the fountain and origin of the western fairy tale, the greatest collection, the most widely distributed in the largest number of languages, the home of all we feel to be unique in that kind of story.

]]>http://www.philip-pullman.com/challenge-retelling-grimms-fairy-tales/feed/0GRIMM TALES – Eventshttp://www.philip-pullman.com/grimm-tales-events/
http://www.philip-pullman.com/grimm-tales-events/#commentsMon, 17 Sep 2012 11:02:41 +0000http://www.philip-pullman.com/?p=2000My version of fifty of the tales of the Brothers Grimm is published this September, and I’ll be doing various […]

]]>My version of fifty of the tales of the Brothers Grimm is published this September, and I’ll be doing various talks and events to go with it.

Monday 24 September – I shall be appearing on Start the Week at 9am on BBC Radio 4.

Saturday 6 October – I shall be recording an interview of the Sky Book Show with Mariella Frostrup (I’m not sure when it will be broadcast) and then later that day speaking at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, from 4-5pm.

Wednesday 10 October, 7pm – I shall be speaking at the Guardian Book Club, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9AG.

Monday 29 October – I shall be talking with the great storyteller Neil Gaiman at the Cambridge Theatre at 7.30pm. I shall read a little from Grimm Tales, we shall talk about stories and storytelling, and there will be a signing afterwards.

Sunday 4 November, 2pm – I shall be lecturing on Grimm at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, as part of the 700th anniversary celebrations for Exeter College.

Sunday 9 December – I shall be talking at the Southbank Centre, time yet to be confirmed.